Microsoft Is Worried It Can't Attract And Retain Young Employees

Are they too old to keep Microsoft at the cutting edge in our Tweet-happy, Foursquare-obsessed world? Is Microsoft a place where Generation Y/Millennials will want to join and stay in the coming years?

I'm not the only one pondering these questions. Microsoft's top brass are, too. Among this past fall's batch of ThinkWeek papers (employee-authored papers on various cultural, technical and other topics important to Microsoft's future) was one entitled "Are You Ready for Generation Y?: Motivating and retaining Generation Y through managerial paradigm shift and the adoption of Enterprise Social Media tools."

I had a chance to read the 14-page "External Version" (i.e., approved for non-Microsoft employees) of this paper, courtesy of its author, Prem Kumar, Operations Manager with Microsoft's Online Systems Division.